Gareth A Davies has been a sports journalist for The Daily Telegraph since 1993. He is Boxing and MMA Correspondent. Has been intrigued by fight and combat sports from a young age. Personal sporting passions are rugby, cricket, and martial arts. Also covers the Paralympic Games. Hates getting his hair cut. Follow on Twitter @GarethADaviesDT

UFC 171: Rob Whiteford will try try and try again as late developer in MMA

The Rs at the beginning and the end which Rob Whiteford rolls out and rounds, pronouncing the name of UFC 171 headliner Robbie Lawler, makes the American sound like a Scottish clan member.

Not surprising, given that Lawler's name has Celtic or Gaelic ancestry, and that in the last few weeks, the UFC welterweight title contender has been working on featherweight Whiteford's strength and conditioning programme with him.

Scotsman Whiteford (10-2 in MMA) who is first out on the card on Saturday night in Dallas in his second UFC contest against Daniel Pineda (18-10, UFC 3-3) has spent the last few weeks of his camp training at American Top Team, represented in all three high-profile welterweight bouts on the card, which will shape the 170lbs division for the rest of the year.

Talking about the welterweight fights, Whiteford told Telegraph Sport: "Anything can happen in MMA, especially in a fight like Lombard and Shields. If Shields manages to pull guard and tie Lombard up, it could be a long hard night for Hector. But Hector knows how important this fight is for him."

"Half a shot, never mind a full shot, and it could be all over. But Shields is not there for nothing. He's awkward. He even looks awkward walking around the hotel!"

In the Tyron Woodley-Carlos Condit matchup, Whiteford assessed:" Tyron is a powerhouse, with the power to put Condit away, but then again Condit's endurance is incredible."

And, on the fight for the vacant welterweight title: "My boy Robbie Lawler – if he connects with Hendricks he will put him away. He's been killing people in sparring and training. Again Hendricks is a top contender. I think it will be a great fight for the fans."

Whiteford has been on the Mike Dolce diet, used now by many fighters, for the last three weeks. "I think I've eaten more in that time than I did throughout the rest of the entire camp," he explained.

Whiteford has been on the road looking to improve his skillset from the first moment he stepped into the sport, a late developer, at the age of 26. But he has been fighting all his life.

"I started four years ago and I knew that I wanted to make the most of my MMA career and get in the UFC," he explained.

"I've been coming back and forth America, to the All Stars Gym in Sweden, over to Brazil, I'd go to the Rough House in Leicester back in the day."

"For me it was impossible just to stay in one place. The standard of training I've had at ATT has been at such a great level. I've always had the bigger picture in mind. Robbie Lawler has been helping me with his strength and conditioning, while Nik Lentz and Dustin Poirier are
brilliant featherweight to train with."

"At ATT there is the lifestyle, and a positive energy to it, and it has been great to be involved in that environment."

He will meet aggression with "more aggression" against "The Pit" Pineda, he told me.

***

There is a bigger picture overall with the Scotsman. Whiteford has always been the underdog. His life has a moral tale to it.

Like the original Robert The Bruce, Whiteford has followed the King of Scotland's famed observance of a spider spinning its web when hiding in a cave on Rathlin Island off the coast of Ireland…'if at first you don't succeed, try try try again'.

He is certainly testimony to that.

Life was tough for Whiteford, growing up. A different picture emerges when he revealed to me that he was placed in a children's boarding house at the age of 6. He was from a broken home. His mother couldn't cope with three children and wee Robert, the youngest, was sent to a children's home in Edinburgh.

He was soon in the thick of it, having to fend for himself. He was bullied, and there was a pecking order, and Whiteford never took a backward step against the bigger, more aggressive kids.

"I've been fighting ever since I can remember, really from the age of 6, fighting in the playground, fighting bullies, just standing up for myself," explains the Scotsman known as 'The Hammer'.

"It was a hostile environment. If you didn't stick up for yourself, you were in the s***. I had to stand up for myself; I didn't have a choice. My Mum and Dad split up, my Mum was a single parent with three kids, and it was too much for her. I was the youngest, so I had to go
away."

"When I went into the home I was one of the youngest there, and there was not a lot I could do about the bullying that went on. But I was the first one involved when anyone was being bullied, once I was big enough. By the time I was one of the oldest, I'd wiped out the culture
of bullying."

Whiteford now wants to go back to his old school in Edinburgh, and into communities to talk to the children about how to succeed in life, that bullying is wrong, that standing up to bullies is right. "I think there is a clear message there, and I'd like to deliver it. I never
had the confidence in the past to talk about these things," he explained to me.

A competitive judoka from the age of 18, success has been a long time coming. Now 30, he is a man on a mission, with a message that he wants the world to hear.

If at first you don't succeed…

***

The tell-tale signs of grappling all his life, though, are Whiteford's cauliflowered ears.

"You mean my 'chick magnets', as I call them. The girls in Scotland always want to look at them, or even touch them. My girlfriend's not too happy about that, mind you…" he says.

"Sometimes they think I'm a rugby player, and I'll just play along and the educated ones know I'm a fighter… but they really are magnets. It's funny, really."

He has trained at Grip House in Glasgow with Joanne Calderwood, the Scottish straw weight who fights in a kilt. Calderwood joins the TUF 20 series in May, which will decide the first ever women's 115lbs UFC champion.

Whiteford speaks highly of the woman he calls "dangerous, like a boy in a girls' body when she fights". Whiteford has even had one of his teeth broken in half by a Calderwood knee, as he went in for a takedown in training. "She's agreed that once she gets the money, she'll pay for the dentistry. She's probably getting a bit of money now from being in TUF."

With the UFC making it official that an event is being planned for Glasgow in 2015, Whiteford sees fighting in the UFC in Scotland as a crowning moment. "I've got to be on that card," he tells me. Just imagine. The place rammed and the fans singing 'Flower of Scotland…"